Fort Stockton
Once a town of Super Mutants, Fort Stockton has since regrown itself into a thriving cattle town where ranchers from as far North as Oklahoma, and as far South as Tamaulipas come to trade and sell their cattle to the meat markets or to their fellow cattlemen. Fort Stockton also is known for its high stakes games of Poker, Faro, and Baccarat where cattlemen risk their lives in the competition for a pot of 10,000 caps. The town is as rough and tumble as they come and is dangerous to any man whether he be from the cow town of Las Vegas, New Mexico or the far-off land of Louisiana however through the help of the Super Mutant mercenaries of Los Gigantes and the Sheriff the town manages to stay in order. History Founding Following the defeat of The Master and his army of Super Mutants in 2162, those remaining Super Mutants scattered to the four winds and made themselves as scarce to the vengeful humans as possible. While some Super Mutants like those led by Marcus and Paladin Jacob settled into towns like Broken Hills and Jacob's Town to try and reconcile with their human adversaries, many more chose to simply divorce themselves from society or to continue the war that the Master had started. One group, led by a Super Mutant named Jubal Corey led the remnants of his command from the Master's Army out East into what was left of Fort Stockton, Texas. Fort Stockton had been hit hard by the Chinese during the Great War, and the ruins were for the most part heavily irradiated, thus preventing humans from safely entering the ruins but allowing the Super Mutants under Jubal to live in relative isolation. Inside the ruins, Jubal and his party began to take the various ruined buildings of Fort Stockton and construct a village within the ruins. With their new town constructed, the Super Mutants set about maintaining their town and keeping themselves alive, moving out of the ruins at night to hunt down a bighorner or two to help feed the town and soon there developed rumors of massive, green mutants that moved around the area at night. However, it wasn't until the year 2191 that humans began to first make their way into the ruins, the radiation having subsided enough that they could traverse the ruins without the need of a radiation suit and a lot of Rad-X. Inside the ruins, they discovered the town of Super Mutants, still led by Jubal Corey, who determined that it was time for the Super Mutants to make their impression upon their fellow wasters and thus set about assuring the terrified locals that they were a friendly bunch, who meant them no harm. Despite some lingering mistrust among the humans and mutants, the two sides got along initially, and a trade began with the mutants retrieving items from further within the ruins for their human counterparts, who in return supplied them with a steady stream of food stuffs. However, the relationship grew heated when a group of prospectors fired on the mutants while they were on one of their scavenging trips and the result was three dead prospectors and mutants with blood on their hands. Although Jubal managed to convince a number of the nearby humans that the prospectors had attacked the mutants, many people thought otherwise and for a time the mutants and humans didn't interact. However, when trouble with raiders and hostile tribals drove the outlying human farmer and ranchers into cover, many displaced humans sought refuge inside the town walls Fort Stockton. These humans were accepted into the community with seemingly open arms, even if the smiles hid a deep mistrust of the humans among the older Super Mutants. Nonetheless to try and alleviate tensions, Jubal offered to allow an election for officials into the town government, and sure enough, the human settlers voted one of their own; Jeffery Howell into the office of Mayor and the mutants made Jubal the town Sheriff and another human; Markus LaToure into the town's Prosecutor. These men would make up the town's first government who would rechristen their little town, Fort Stockton. Divided Town However, issues for this new town government arose almost immediately as disputes and conflicts between the humans and mutants arose in succession ranging from everything from the hiring of new deputies to setting up of laws to settle disputes between the town's farmers and ranchers. At one point an issue arose over who should be allowed to hire new Peace Officers for the town's Sheriff's Office, at first this duty was delegated to the town Sheriff; Jubal. Yet when Markus believed that Jubal was hiring too many of his fellow mutants into the force he began to use his power as town Prosecutor to veto the hiring and instead put forth more human candidates that he believed would settle the inequality of the force, yet these applicants were rejected by Jubal who thought they were all simply too inexperienced or too headstrong to be good lawmen. Thus the two officials came to a point of argument with both men believing he was in the right. Eventually, Mayor Howell stepped in and settled the debate, allowing Jubal to hire his own deputies without interference from Markus, but also gave the Prosecutor the ability to commission his own temporary Peace Officers in the case that members of the current constabulary became out of hand or violated the law. This new system of law enforcement was put to the test when a dispute arose with an argument between the town's tanner and a Brahmin rancher by the name of Honest Turner, the Tanner had accused Honest of giving him gauge level prices on Brahmin hides because he was a human. To this Honest responded that he was simply pricing the hides based within a price range that would allow him to make up for what he spent in expenses. Yet the Tanner began to push the issue and went to Prosecutor LaToure for assistance in the issue, to this Honest turned to one of his friends; Johnny Rattler a deputy working for Sheriff Corey. Deputy Rattler proceeded to threaten the Tanner with a search of his residents for illegal materials if he persisted on the issue. Angered by this the Tanner went to Prosecutor LaToure and reported what happened, Markus responded by commissioning two temporary constables; one mutant and one human to investigate the issue. The two lawmen came back that Deputy Rattler had indeed acted in a manner that went against his office and the oath he took, thus Deputy Rattler was placed under arrest and after a brief consideration, he was placed in jail for his actions. While in jail, he was killed by a group of vigilantes who claimed to be working for the betterment of the humans in town, the identified themselves as the Stockton Invincibles. The Invincibles were a vigilante organization that had been formed by members of the human half of town, the organization was devoted to protecting the humans of Fort Stockton from attack from the Super Mutants who they viewed as untrustworthy abominations. This killing sparked an outcry that Rattler hadn't faced proper justice and in the first instance of serious cooperation Prosecutor LaToure and Sheriff Corey put out the word that any word of the men who perpetrated the crime were urged to come to them. After two days, the Sheriff's Office received a tip that the perpetrators were known to hangout along with other members of the vigilantes in the Crooked Lamp Saloon in the human side of town. Sheriff Corey along with a number of deputies and temporary Peace Officers promptly walked into the Crooked Lamp and arrested the two men responsible, hauling them off to jail and generally calming tensions within the town. From that point forward the trust shown to Sheriff Corey and his deputies only grew within the human and mutant population as they began to see him and his counterpart in the Prosecutor's Office as friends of the people rather than their enemies. The Turtledove Trail By the time 2200 arrived the famous Turtledove Trail was first being trod by cattlemen and merchants alike as they traded between the markets of the Permian Basin and Tamaulipas, the trail itself passed in relatively close proximity to the town of Fort Stockton and thus it was decided that the town should make itself a stop for these merchants and cattlemen and thus began to advertise their secure town, putting up signs along the trail telling of fresh produce and relative safety behind solid walls and armed guards along with an open market for cattle of all kind, thus Mexican Longhorn ranchers and Texan Brahmin ranchers began to run their herds into Fort Stockton, and as the two groups met, they began to sell and trade their cattle with one another along with the town and outside buyers. This meshing of these different suppliers and buyers quickly created a thriving trade in Fort Stockton as cattlemen returned alongside new faces bringing horses, Bighorners and from out West came Black Angus cattle from Las Vegas, New Mexico. All these products came together and were sold, traded and butchered within Fort Stockton as several slaughterhouses opened up to serve the various ranchers looking to process their cattle, and in 2210 the town's Stockyard opened up, here cattle are held either until they are slaughtered or sold to another buyer, all overseen by the City Stockman. The town, with the arrival of all these new ranchers, merchants and cowboys, quickly became saw the opening of several new saloons and cantinas, some nothing more than a large tent, serving everything from Moonshine to the finest corn whiskey available. With this increase in bars and the opening up of card houses and other gambling spots the town's crime rate shot through the roof and the job of the Sheriff and his deputies quickly became twice as difficult, although their stature made sure that many would be outlaws and cop killers more hesitant to try anything, the crime rate did soar and their fellow human deputies quickly became the target of outlaw's bullets. The result was the Prosecutor's Office and Sheriff's Office having to hire more deputies to help police the new populace. The Dodgiest Town in Texas With the increased number of criminals and rowdy cattlemen looking for a place to spend their pay, get a drink and relax the town became an increasingly dangerous place as the Deputies and the Sheriff were routinely called upon to break up bar fights, track down killers and to try and control a town increasingly run by those with the most muscle and guns. The streets of Fort Stockton were increasingly filled with the presence of armed street gangs, all of them claiming control of one part of town or the other, some acting as muscle for saloon and card house owners, others trying to extract bribes and extortion fees from passerby and merchants, all of them were at odds with the Sheriff's Office. The aged town government in 2219 began to slowly die off, starting with Markus LaToure who was replaced by one of his former constables, Walter Kiers and Mayor Jeffery Howell died to be replaced by Martin Dietrich. As for Jubal Corey, in 2220 he was voted out of office and replaced with a human, and his former Undersheriff; Horatio Canne. Yet the violence in the streets continued, and gangs like the Butchers, The Mason Turner Gang, and The Basin Molerats all began to gain power in the streets as the town's lawmen fought to keep control of their streets. Seeing the rapidly deteriorating situation, Jubal, now a freelance, formed a Committee, called the Fort Stockton Peace Committee. This group of vigilantes grew to number about thirty-eight people and setout to combat the growing criminal gangs in Fort Stockton. The vigilantes struck out against the outlaws, and soon the streets of Fort Stockton were running red with the blood of it's criminal underworld. However, the gangs struck back and soon the streets were filled with the corpses of vigilantes and outlaws as the two sides killed each other off in the nights. Eventually, the constant killings drove most of the gangs off and left the streets of Fort Stockton soaked in blood and left to be ruled by the establishment owners, now free of the gang's oppression. The remaining vigilantes decided that their efforts in cleaning the streets had been thorough enough and that they all seemed to work together well, thus they formed around Jubal into Los Gigantes Mercenarios. This band of mercenaries immediately began to seek work with the town and after some haggling with Mayor Dietrich, Los Gigantes received a contract to assist in the defense and protection of Fort Stockton from outside forces. Economy Slaughterhouse & Stockyard The Slaughterhouse and Stockade are the main pulls of Stockton, here a cattleman can have his beeves sold, buy a new herd and have them butchered and sold to buyers all within the walls of one town. The Slaughterhouses are all independently owned and thus are subject to the management of their individual owners. As for the Stockyard, the whole operation is overseen by the City Cattle Dealer, currently, a man named Judah Adkins, but the revenues earned from cattlemen paying to have their cattle bought and sold by the City Dealer are taken in by the town government. As a result of the town's investment in the Stockyard, it is often guarded by members of the Sheriff's Department or hired constables from the Prosecutor's Office. Caravans Caravans make up the second largest market in the Fort. Alongside the various cattlemen and cowboys that come to sell their cattle, come merchants of various kinds. Some are arms merchants looking to sell some ammunition and weaponry to either the town's lawmen and mercenaries or to the town's outlaws and since the number of lawmen isn't adequate to patrol all parts of town, many of such merchants can freely sell their wears without harassment from the Sheriff's men. Outside of arms merchants are those who sell good, chems and booze along with those who prefer to deal in the cattle itself, buying and selling the beeves that are traded in town. Courier Service Fort Stockton provides a courier service to those in need of delivering a package to one of the many settlements in the Permian Basin or down in the ruins of San Antonio. The Road Runner Courier Service is known for its speedy delivery and the dependable couriers, whether they be on foot, a part of a caravan or mounted on one of the Service's several brush ponies. Mercenaries Los Gigantes are the only active mercenary company within Fort Stockton, however in order to work as a mercenary for the town or sell your services to those looking to hire you must attain a permit from the Prosecutor's Office and 15% of all the revenues made during jobs are to be surrendered to the Mayor and the town government. Other Services The town offers a Livery for riders to put up their horses and purchase new ones, several Inns, and Taverns for people to rent rooms in. Throughout the town are a number of saloons, bars, cantinas, brothels and Chem Houses that service the newest members of the town's population. Also, the town sports a number of card houses and casinos, one ''El Supremo ''offers a game of Baccarat for only high rollers. Within this game, the players play for a massive pot of caps, 10,000 in all. However the game has a twist, those who lose the game are killed, and only the winner walks away with his winnings. This game is conducted with the utmost caution, as player's weapons are confiscated and are thoroughly searched and it is ensured that all have been properly measured for a coffin. Category:Places Category:Texas Category:Communities Category:Adoptable